The motivation for the research behind "Complex
Causal Structures. Extensions of a Regularity Theory of
Causation" has been twofold. First, after having been
disregarded for a long time, regularity theories of causation
have lately received increasing attention -- essentially
induced by problems encountered within other theoretical
frameworks. The following studies can be seen as exemplary
cases of this revived interest in regularity accounts:

Second, up
to recent years philosophical analyses of the causal relation
focussed on direct causal dependencies among single causes and
effects. For a long time it was generally assumed that complex
causal structures could be straightforwardly accounted for
once a successful analysis of atomic causal dependencies would
be available. This confidence, however, has meanwhile turned
out to have been premature for many prominent theoretical
accounts of causation. Complex structures may well be
equivalent as regards a respective theoretical framework (e.g.
probabilistically or counterfactually equivalent) without
being equivalent in causal terms. Thus, this thesis fills two
gaps in the available literature on causation. On the one
hand, it reassesses the prospects and merits of regularity
theoretic analyses of causation and presents an up-to-date
regularity theory, which, as I claim, is unaffected by the
criticism traditionally raised against regularity accounts and
which, furthermore, provides valuable analytical means not
available within other theoretical frameworks. On the other
hand, it develops an algorithm of causal reasoning that does
not build up complex structures layer by layer by suitably
combining atomic causal dependencies among single factors. The
algorithm directly maps complex structures onto sets of
coincidently instantiated factors. I argue, that thereby the
ambiguities encountered upon distinguishing between different
complex causal structures can be avoided.

Further Research Projects

Causal Slingshots Causal slingshots are formal
arguments advanced by proponents of an event ontology of
token-level causation which, in the end, are intended to show
two things: (i) The logical form of statements expressing
causal dependencies on token level features a binary predicate
``...causes..'' and (ii) that predicate takes events as
arguments. Even though formalisms are only revealing with
respect to the logical form of natural language statements, if
the latter are shown to be adequately captured within a
corresponding formalism, proponents of slingshots usually take
the adequacy of their formalizations for granted without
justifying it. The first part of this paper argues that the
most discussed version of a causal slingshot, viz. the one
e.g. presented by Davidson (1980), can indeed be refuted for
relying on an inadequate formal apparatus. In contrast, the
formal means of Goedel's (1951) often neglected slingshot are
shown to stand on solid ground in the second part of the
paper. Nonetheless, I contend that Goedel's slingshot does
only half the work friends of event causation would like it to
do. It provides good reasons for (i) but not for (ii).

Interdefining Causation and Intervention
Non-reductive interventionist theories of causation and
methodologies of causal reasoning embedded in that theoretical
framework have become increasingly popular in recent years.
This paper argues that one variant of an interventionist
account of causation, viz. the one e.g. professed in Woodward
(2003), is unsuited as theoretical fundament of
interventionist methodologies of causal reasoning, because it
renders corresponding methodologies incapable of uncovering a
causal structure in a finite number of steps. This finding
runs counter to Woodward's own assessment and to other recent
studies which presume that Woodward's version of
interventionism is effectively applicable to uncover causal
structures, e.g. Campbell (2007) or Sober (2007).

Interventionist Causal Exclusion and Non-reductive
Physicalism The first part of this paper presents
an argument showing that the currently most highly acclaimed
interventionist theory of causation, i.e. the one presented in
Woodward (2003), excludes supervening macro properties from
having a causal influence on effects of their micro
supervenience bases. Moreover, this interventionist exclusion
argument is demonstrated to rest on weaker premises than
classical exclusion arguments. The second part then discusses
a weakening of interventionism which Woodward suggests in
(2008). This weakened version of interventionism turns out to
either be inapplicable to cases of downward causation
involving supervening macro properties or to render
corresponding causal claims meaningless. In sum, the paper
argues that, contrary to what many non-reductive physicalists
claim, interventionism does not render non-reductive
physicalism immune to the problem of causal exclusion.

Causal Cycles Many causal processes are cyclically
structured. For instance, with increasing unemployment the
consumption of the population is reduced. This causes
decreased profits on the side of the employers, which, in
turn, causes them to lay off even more people. Thus, the
unemployment increases anew. Or the biochemical reactions
occurring in many animal organisms that produce urea from
ammonia are structured in terms of a cycle, the so-called urea
cycle. Nonetheless, no presently known procedure of causal
reasoning is capable of inferring causal cycles in their full
extent (In A Discovery Algorithm for Directed Cyclic
Graphs (1996) Richardson presents a procedure that
partially uncovers causal cycles). Both the algorithms
presented in Glymour, Spirtes, Scheines, Causation,
Prediction, and Search (2000) and the algorithms
designed to analyze deterministic structures as e.g. developed
in Ragin, The Comparative Method (1987) and in my
Ph.D. thesis are designed to infer acyclic structures. In this
project I want to extend the algorithm I developed in my Ph.D.
thesis thus that it is capable of analyzing causal cycles.

Adequate
Formalization (with T. Lampert) The problem of
adequately transforming statements of natural language into
the formalism of standard propositional or predicate logic is
a problem most students of standard logic encounter without
being presented with satisfactory solutions. Introductions to
standard logic usually illustrate the formalization of natural
language with a handful of paradigmatic examples supplemented
with commentaries to the effect that formalization is
essentially based on an artistic skill that cannot be
regularized or taught methodically. Adequate formalization,
according to the standard view, is a matter of experience and
should thus not be a focus of a logician's interest. In this
project, we first identify problems as regards to analyzing
the notion of adequate formalization and to providing criteria
that regulate the matching of logical formulae and natural
language. We then take on to solve these problems by defining
a necessary and sufficient criterion of adequate
formalization. On the basis of this criterion we argue that
logic should not to be seen as an ars iudicandi capable of
evaluating the validity or invalidity of informal arguments,
but as an ars explicandi that renders transparent the formal
structure of informal reasoning. For a detailed presentation
of the results of this project see our paper on Adequate
Formalization.

Unity
of Logical Form (with T. Lampert) It is often
suggested in the literature that the logical formalization of
natural language texts is to be guided by the logical form of
a corresponding text. According to this proposal, a text can
only be seen to be adequately formalized if its logical form
is transparently represented by the respective formalism. That
means the notion of logical form is considered to be more
basic than the notion of adequate formalization. In this
project we call for a reversal of this conceptual hierarchy.
First, we show that the notion of adequate formalization is
more basic than the notion of logical form. Second, the
traditional picture of adequate formalization that can be
found in studies as Blau (1977) or Brun (2004) is argued to be
incapable of accounting for the logical forms of texts without
giving rise to severe problems, notably when it comes to
proving the validity of arguments. Third, we sketch a way to
spell out what the logical form of a natural language text is
by drawing on a new picture of adequate formalization which
was devised in our paper on Adequate Formalization. For a
detailed presentation of the results of this project see our
paper on the
Unity of Logical Form.